Democracy, Liberal Zionism, and Civil-Military Relations in Israel: A Review Article

Two books on civil-military relations in Israel, published eighteen years apart, focus on Israel's future as a Jewish democracy. Peri's 2006 volume depicts the security establishment as a threat to civilian rule, whereas Ziv, in his 2024 book, portrays waning political influence of the Israeli military and security services as associated with democratic backsliding. The authors each favor the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but differ on whether opportunities for it have been missed because the military and security establishment has had too much or too little influence over government policy. Consideration of the one-state reality suggests the extent to which both arguments have been overtaken by events.